Re:Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying
by junon on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @04:02PM
(#26639669)
> for whatever reason
Because we've given every single person a voice and the promise that their opinion is just as important as everyone else's, despite their understanding or their qualifications, and it has made people collectively entitled and vitriolic.
Couple this with absolutely batshit insane current events for the last ~5 years and you have massive divide.
Then multiply that by the expansion of technology into every day lives, where everyone is connected and has an up-to-date, moment-by-moment window into literally thousands of other lives, and people get extremely detached from their own selves and their own beliefs. They stop thinking for themselves, almost entirely.
Not to mention things like Twitter, with quirks like "you have to fit very heavy conversations into cute little limited messages" so as to even further increase the pressure on public discourse.
All of this friction creates heat, so to speak, and people start realizing that outside their circles are people who are so foreign and different that they MUST be idiot enemies, and thus everyone begins to despise each other, categorizing people and using assumptions about their character against them, all formed from a few blurbs of random information either from context or a few textboxes on a social media profile.
It's just like when one is unable to effectively communicate, they often resort to violence. I firmly believe this is the same thing happening online - it's just a huge, crowded shouting match and since nothing ever happens despite how loud you're screaming, you have to resort to other means to get a rise out of someone else.
I'm not a particularly happy person and I really, _really_ dislike interacting with other people, so I can certainly understand why some of this happens. Life sucks for a lot of people, and being able to express that whilst having the buffer of a computer screen and ethernet cable between you and the other person is certainly a "great power, great responsibility" type of situation.
Because we've given every single person a voice and the promise that their opinion is just as important as everyone else's, despite their understanding or their qualifications, and it has made people collectively entitled and vitriolic.
Couple this with absolutely batshit insane current events for the last ~5 years and you have massive divide.
Then multiply that by the expansion of technology into every day lives, where everyone is connected and has an up-to-date, moment-by-moment window into literally thousands of other lives, and people get extremely detached from their own selves and their own beliefs. They stop thinking for themselves, almost entirely.
Not to mention things like Twitter, with quirks like "you have to fit very heavy conversations into cute little limited messages" so as to even further increase the pressure on public discourse.
All of this friction creates heat, so to speak, and people start realizing that outside their circles are people who are so foreign and different that they MUST be idiot enemies, and thus everyone begins to despise each other, categorizing people and using assumptions about their character against them, all formed from a few blurbs of random information either from context or a few textboxes on a social media profile.
It's just like when one is unable to effectively communicate, they often resort to violence. I firmly believe this is the same thing happening online - it's just a huge, crowded shouting match and since nothing ever happens despite how loud you're screaming, you have to resort to other means to get a rise out of someone else.
I'm not a particularly happy person and I really, _really_ dislike interacting with other people, so I can certainly understand why some of this happens. Life sucks for a lot of people, and being able to express that whilst having the buffer of a computer screen and ethernet cable between you and the other person is certainly a "great power, great responsibility" type of situation.